Stars and Bucks: Palestinian cafe spoofs Starbucks

Palestinian customers walk into the Stars & Bucks Cafe in Manara Square. The cafe offers customers a mix of West and Middle East, from free Wi-Fi and Italian cappuccino to water pipes and Arabic coffee. (Getty Images)

Stars and Bucks Cafe, located in the Palestinian West Bank, isn’t part of the Starbucks chain.

But it looks like it is. That’s kind of the point.

Getty Images

Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but Starbucks probably shouldn’t consider itself too flattered – not this time, anyway.

The Seattle-based coffee company has thousands of cafes worldwide, almost all of which are branded with the iconic mermaid logo.

And then there’s Stars and Bucks. That cafe also has a circular, green logo. It serves cappuccinos in ceramic cups and provides free Wi-Fi for customers.

Even the green, block lettering on the sign outside looks the same.

Located on a corner in Ramallah’s Manara Square, Stars and Bucks is targeted at tourists. Signs are printed in Arabic and English, and the cafe blends Middle Eastern cultures (it offers hookah water pipes) with Western influences.

On its English website, the owners describe their cafe as “touristic masterpiece” that has a “future vision.”

A Palestinian police patrol passes by the Stars & Bucks Cafe in Manara Square in the center of Ramallah. (Getty Images)

The owners didn’t respond to a request for an interview.

“Stars and Bucks Cafe has become in one year and a half a Palestinian tourist attraction which is being visited by more than one million and a half (sic),” according to the site. “This humble figure shows the extent of success of Stars and Bucks Cafe.”

There are plans for expansion in the works. The site names several future locations in the West Bank, and says the company has plans for a central food “factory.”

It isn’t clear if the cafe is a lighthearted spoof on Starbucks or a political statement. The owners write on the site about securing the rights to use the cafe’s name, but they don’t directly address the obvious parody.

Many posts on online tourism boards speculate that the cafe is a jab at American consumerism – and a criticism of Starbucks for its perceived support of Israel.

The coffee company has come under fire in recent years for taking sides in the conflict between that country and the Palestinians.

Starbucks spokespeople did not return a call seeking comment earlier this week, but a statement on the company’s website denies that it takes sides in political disputes.

“Starbucks Coffee Company remains a non-political organization,” according to the statement. “We do not support any political or religious cause. Further, allegations that Starbucks provides financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army in any way are unequivocally false. Unfortunately, these rumors persist despite our best efforts to refute them.”

Starbucks currently operates stores in Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Lebanon. It closed stores in Israel in 2003 due to “on-going operational challenges.”